Officials in Bergdahl’s Town Deluged With Hateful Right Wing Phone Calls, Cancel Celebration

NBC News reports that as a result of the massive right wing smear campaign (unfortunately aided by much of the media) against Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, city officials in his hometown are being deluged with vitriolic, hateful phone calls.

This irrational lynch mob mentality is being fueled very deliberately by right wing blogs and media. They’ve found a juicy target and they’re using it to whip their audiences into a blind rage — which isn’t far from their normal state, anyway.

These phone calls are the direct equivalent of what you’ll see in the comment sections of any right wing site on the web today.

Jane Drussel, the president of the Hailey Chamber of Commerce, has been fielding dozens of angry calls.

“Well, (I feel) disappointment number one, just absolutely total surprise at how bad some of them are,” she told NBC News on Tuesday. …

Drussel said many of the calls are cancelling trips to the town of about 8,000.

“Well, number one is, how dare we as a community support someone who in their mind they’re thinking of as a ‘deserter,’ a traitor. That they had plans to come here on their vacation, they’re no longer coming, they’re cancelling their reservations.”

“I just find that shocking,” she said. “You know, we’re Americans, and we need to act like Americans, and to me that’s un-American. Let things play out, and if there needs to be action taken, I’m sure it will be taken. But that’s not the city of Hailey’s responsibility.”

She said the staffers at the Chamber of Commerce, and at a store she runs, don’t know how to deal with the vitriol.

“(We’re) really surprised at the people who are calling — they are hate calls, they’re not just people voicing an opinion,” she said. “The girls just don’t even… we’re all just absolutely in shock, we don’t know how to respond to that to tell you quite truthfully.”

(Hailey, Idaho) - Hailey community members who worked during March and April of this year to organize their annual Bring Bowe Back event in Hailey have asked to cancel the event.

When the news of Bowe Bergdahl’s release was announced this past Saturday, the organizers joyfully declared that the event would be renamed Bowe is Back, and would become a celebration of family and friends being reunited with their son who was had been held captive in Afganistan for five years. In the past, the event had been a celebration of support to the family through these many years.

National media attention on Hailey and this event has led many across the nation to believe that the event is intended to be a military parade. There is broad interest in this topic, as evidenced by the approximate 100 correspondences per day received by the City of Hailey this week. The organizers and Hailey expect a significant increase in attendance to this event, by people who both want to support or protest against it.

In the interest of public safety, the event will be cancelled. Hailey, a town of 8,000, does not have the infrastructure to support an event of the size this could become.